Chapter Three

Thirty million years in the future, it was the previous day. While Jelinek Sargosian sat languidly in a corner of his red plush couch on the planet of Beljib in the Galaxy of Andromeda, something that should have been unnerving happened. Suddenly and without warning, a grinning head appeared on every television screen within broadcasting range from the Orion Constellation. It wasn't a human head, although it did bear a passing resemblance to one if the light was just right and one was in a fairly open-minded mood. It had a square jaw, a cleft chin and what looked like a plastic mold of wavy dark hair on its crown. The only thing that distinguished it from a real, live television journalist was its rather conspicuous lack of shoulders.

First, there was the usual expression of sheer bliss. Then it began to speak.

“Hello, people of the Universe, this is your favorite talking head with the fabulous show Good Morning Galaxy, here to give you the scoop on everyone who is anyone in the Milky Way, Andromeda...and beyond.” The head pretended to take a loud, deep breath. “Today, we have one Mr. Jelinek Sargosian with us.

“Actually, he isn't literally with us here in the studio,” the head continued in a whisper, as if Jelinek Sargosian didn't actually realize he hadn't traveled light years to sit in an abandoned television studio and was, in fact, lounging comfortably on his own couch.

“He's in his groo-o-ovy bachelor pad somewhere in Andromeda, the Galaxy that Really Gets You Going, and I'm...well I'm nowhere, aren't I? And everywhere. It's great to be me. Oh the irony. Now where was I? Oh yes,” it said with a delighted laugh and then a sigh. “Mi-i-i-ster Sargosian, is it?”

Station NTWT in the Orion Constellation had been around longer than anyone could remember and Mr. Head had been presenting the odd announcement as long as most people had been alive. In fact, Mr. Head had been presenting the odd announcement as long as most people's grandparents had been alive. That's because Mr. Head wasn't, in fact, alive. He had been designed by Herman, the nephew of the original NTWT station manager and owner, Slubwick Nathbottom XXVIII of the Orion Nathbottoms.

One morning, while enjoying his sardine sandwich in the only bathrobe he seemed able to find, on the rotating deck of the family's floating mansion, Slubwick Nathbottom XXVIII of the Orion Nathbottoms came to the somewhat startling realization that people of all species were prone to make a great deal of errors. He came to this realization while watching NTWT's news program Good Morning Galaxy, and had been quite startled when the news announcer had told everyone that the Mayor of Orion had a fetish for silly hats. Silly women's hats, for the most part, with pink flamingoes perched right on top.

Slubwick Nathbottom XXVIII had fallen right off his chair and nearly choked on his sardines. He'd figured that the only reason he hadn't died that day was a deep and abiding fear that his own newspeople would then tell the Cosmos that their station manager, the owner of NTWT, had died of a sardine sandwich while wearing a yellow bathrobe covered in delicate purple begonias. Slubwick Nathbottom XXVIII detested begonias.

He'd determined that he had to do something and do it quick, so he went with the very first plan that presented itself, and the very next second was screaming young Herman's name as if life and all that is sacred depended on it. The result of that few seconds of panic was Mr. Head.

“Hello everyone,” a silky voice said just as screens split all over the Galaxy, and in certain demographically sound areas of nearby galaxies, to reveal Mr. Head on one side and Jelinek Sargosian on the other.

Jelinek wore his trademark Anya Preznik silver suit, makeup and pink spikey hair. He sat with his legs crossed and one arm resting on his silver-clad thigh, with a very colorful, complicated-looking drink in his other hand. He was tall and thin and had the look of a very attractive spider.

On the bottom of Jelinek Sargosian's half of the screen appeared the words, BELJIB, ANDROMEDA.

Mr. Head's head turned slightly to its left and appeared to be looking at Sargosian. “Let's talk, Mr. Sargosian, about...” And here he sighed deeply. “...Alabama.”

Sargosian laughed. “What can I say, baby?” he said, gesturing with his long, graceful hands. “The girls love me there. But I can't honestly answer about the wee party-crashers, you know, babe. I never got buzzed about it.”

In order to “buzz” someone, or place an offworld call, one must own a Cosmobuzz 350 or later model. It is a nifty little device with a reach so far, that the occasional time traveler has used it to play a trick on a past self by calling his own phone, with the call scheduled to arrive on the day he purchased the Cosmobuzz.

“And did you give them your buzzcode? Hmm?” Mr. Head smiled innocently and batted his eyelids.

“Really, baby, what would be the point? Anyway, I told them I was from London.” Sargosian held out his hand to study his fingernails. “I really think it's time for a manicure.”

Mr. Head sighed. “It must be so lovely to have fingernails,” he said. “At this point though, I'd settle for a torso. Having only a head isn't the most fashionable thing after all. Makes it re-e-ally hard to get to first base.” Again, the forlorn sigh. Then he perked up suddenly. “Speaking of first base, what about the pink spaceship you're always in? Do you think you'll ever upgrade?”

“Oh there is no upgrade when you have Love Among the Stars, baby. She was my first ship and she'll be my last. She's the best flying bachelor pad in the Cosmos.”

Mr. Head turned to the camera and wiggled his digital eyebrows at the audience while making conspiratorial clicking noises with his tongue, then turned back, smiling innocently, as though Sargosian hadn't seen him on his own screen. “But why Alabama? Why the Southern United States? Is it part of a...greater plan?”

For a moment, Jelinek looked as though he had just found something interesting and slightly disturbing in his drink. Then he smiled and gave his characteristic eyelid flutter. “My spaceship just seems to like landing in Alabama, baby. Something about it reminds me of home.”

He sighed and gazed off into the distance, allowing his hand to travel delicately to his chest. Jelinek Sargosian was many things – intergalactic playboy, celebrity, technophile, sports fan. He was the sort of person who appeared on the covers of magazines when he did something and about whom magazines speculated when he didn't do anything. Most of all, however, he was simply a bored celebrity, which was one of the reasons he had decided to destroy the human race. Or rather, unmake the human race.

It wasn't that Sargosian had anything in particular against Earthpeople. In fact, he was quite fond of several and would be quite sorry for them to cease to ever have existed. It's just that they weren't very good at Tailball, mostly because they hadn't got any tails.

You see, Jelinek Sargosian had a lot of money riding on the next Tailball game of the season, which wasn't to take place for another five Earth years or so. His current team was made up of Trilfinars, which weren't half bad. But he wanted more of a sure thing. He wanted homo-reptilians, a species that could have been born if only someone had been there in the Carboniferous Period of the Paleozoic Era to prevent what became the mammalian and reptilian lines ever splitting apart.

He had come up with the idea quite by accident one afternoon while fiddling with his Exponential Event Horizon Calculator. It is a device that allows a user to type in a particular set of circimstances, and read every possible outcome for as far into the future as he would like. A man could type in, for example, “Have two more drinks at the Saturn Nine on July 17. Next two days,” and get startling results like, “You stumble into your spaceship, set it to 'automatic' and circle home world for two days with the worst hangover you've ever had, 20-percent probability.

“You start a conversation with a pretty girl and annoy her until she decides to make a run for it, then stumble into your spaceship, set it to 'automatic' and circle your home world for two days with the worst hangover you've ever had, then wake up with the unshakeable impression you've been a complete idiot, 30-percent probability.

“You start a conversation with a different pretty girl, who finds you irresistably attractive and you both circle your home world for the next two days, 45-percent probability.

“You stumble into someone else's spaceship and wind up slaving in a fish-packing plant on a remote moon on the edge of Andromeda, remembering the worst hangover of your life as the last good time you ever had, 5-percent probability.”

The Exponential Event Horizon Calculator is purchased mainly by people who enjoy having exotic new things to worry about and saying, “I told you so” a lot. Jelinek Sargosian, on the other hand, had purchased one so he could see what might happen if he failed to somehow spawn a championship Tailball team. He didn't like the sound of, “You are replaced by younger, prettier celebrities and die in anonymity, 92-percent probability.”

Interestingly enough, the Exponential Event Horizon Calculator was the device that gave him the idea to take drastic measures to create a winning team so that he would be remembered for something more than just having had a pretty face. However, he wasn't exactly operating in secret. The Quillifaxian Time Agency had known for some years that he had made much more frequent trips to Earth than even the tabloid news broadcasts had suspected, and not merely because he thought the girls were pretty. The Time Agents had known for some time that he was searching for the exact moment in Earth's evolution when he could step in and nudge the homo-reptilians into existence, thereby preventing the birth of the human race.

After all this time, he had finally found his event horizon. He had made it back in time. He had completed his mission. He only had to sit back and wait until the temporal ripple had caught up with the present.

Without warning, Jelinek Sargosian leaned forward and looked at Mr. Head's audience, and therefore Mr. Head, right in the eye. For a moment, Mr. Head's expression became decidedly less smug as Jelinek Sargosian's voice became much lower.

“I've got something much more interesting than Alabama Earth babies if your audience wants a real story,” he said. “Something exciting. Something that will alter the course of history. Of course, they'll have only about a day and a half to appreciate the humor of it all before they cease to exist.”